4KTV at SMPTE: Broadcaster Update

HOLLYWOOD —It’s not your eyes. It’s the TV. Pixel counts
abound. The folks at NHK in Japan are doing 8KTV; U.S. broadcasters are
experimenting with 4KTV, and much of Europe is still moving from standard- to
high-definition TV. It’s enough to make a world traveling TV watcher visit the
eye doc.

At the SMPTE Technology Conference in Hollywood this week, Hiroshi Shimamoto of
NHK noted that the Japanese public broadcaster started doing “super hi-def,” or
2K-by-2K, in 1992. The network brought 8K to the NAB Show last year with
footage shot at the 2012 London Olympics. The experimental coverage helped
Tokyo secure the 2020 Summer Games, which NHK pledged to do in 8K’s resolution
of 7680 x 4320. NHK will return to NAB 2014 once again with their “Super
Hi-Vision” 8K theater with 22.2 surround sound.

Meanwhile, the European Broadcast Union is grappling with how to handle 4KTV.
Yvonne Thomas of the EBU said the spectrum squeeze in Europe is putting
pressure on her organization to come up with useable bit-rate and transmission
platform, “because in Europe, we’ll lose more and more spectrum through 2015.
It has not yet been determined if we can use the spectrum for UHDTV,” 4KTV’s
other acronym. “Broadcasters are still migrating to HD in Europe.”

U.S. broadcasters have employed 4K on the production side. Bob Seidel of CBS said
the network is now acquiring assets in 4K. He also described how the network
used 4K for what it’s calling “Heyeper Zoom,” with emphasis on the “eye.” CBS
employed six 4K cameras at the Super Bowl to acquire footage at 3840 x 2160
pixels and used the footage for slo-mo replays and highlights.

The camera system employed 4096 x 2304 CMOS imagers, and would do from 60 to
900 frames per second. CBS settled on 300. For-A’s FT-1 cameras were used, each with 1 TB
memory cartridges partitioned into six segments. The FT-1’s each had four 3
Gbps outputs—one for each quadrant. Standard PL Fujino lenses were used. Seidel
said one of the concerns was whether or not the camera operator could find
focus.

An Evertz stream server and a standard EVS slo-mo controller was employed. The
switcher operator extracted the 4K images with a moveable zoom window.

Fox developed a similar system—“Super Zoom”—which it started working on in
2010. Fox’s Kevin Callahan said the network started with a Vision Research
Camera and PsiTech Vortex for ingest, playback and extraction. Fox later moved
to the Sony F-65 with CDU for the camera and AJA Corvid Ultra for extraction,
retaining the Vortex for ingest. Earlier this year, Fox acquired NASCAR events
in 4K with a For-A FT-100 and a Canon C-500.

Beginning of this year, Fox did NASCAR in 4K… acquisition, FOR-A FT-100 and
Canon C-500, which was also used for the MLB All-Star Game along with AJA’s
KiPro Quad DeBayer. For NFL games, Fox used the Canon C-500 with AJA’s KiPro
Quad DeBayer and Corvid Ultra, as well as EVS XT servers.

What Fox has learned with Super Zoom, Callahan said, is that:
- Not every play lends itself to 4K.
- Focus is critical.
- Filtering is needed for extraction.
- Uncompressed is better.
- Motion blur is still a problem with 4K.
- Moving 4x3 Gbps SDI can be difficult.

January 4, 2013: “NHK
to do First 8K U.S. Broadcast Demo at NAB Show”Besides the presentation in the theater, NHK
will also show for the first time outside Japan the real-time, over-the-air
transmission and reception of Super Hi-Vision broadcasts, using two UHF
television channels.